Music, loud enough to block out the world, makes me feel safe and sane, though I often appear to be otherwise.

Case in point.

The Place: The North American premiere of the Oscar nominated best film "Babel," at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.

The Scene: the very last row of the highest balcony, where they usually seat the press in a place called Roy Thompson Hall, a Performing Arts Center-type venue that seats a few thousand (and whose futuristic architecture got it a small role in the first "X-Men" movie).

The Characters: Adding to the chaos outside the hall, where the ticket line snakes for blocks, limousines pull up in front of the entrance depositing stars and civilians alike, in front of onlookers pressed against barricades. From our place in line we see flashbulbs go off and hear screams. It's Brad Pitt, one of the film's stars, who before going into the theater, stops and chats with the crowd. Nice.

"Babel," which was released on DVD this week, tells four stories set in different parts of the world, and whose "butterly flaps its wings" structure is designed to demonstrate humanity's interconnectedness.

At festival premieres the films are usually introduced by the filmmaker, this time Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who introduces the cast, including now best supporting actress Oscar nominees Rinko Kikuchi, who plays the hearing impaired teenager, Adriana Barraza, who plays the Mexican domestic, and Pitt who plays an American tourist in a Middle Eastern country.

They disappear, the lights dim, the film starts and shortly they reappear in the front row of the balcony, perhaps 100-feet below and to the side of me, from where they will take their bows when the 140 minute film is done.

Enter me, singing.

Halfway through the film, Kikuchi's character jacked up on ecstacy, enters a dance club and the aggressive stimuli on screen is a reflection of her altered mental state. Adding to the scene, is a very loud remixed version of the maddeningly contagious Earth Wind and Fire song, "September," with a very long dance club intro.

But just as it hits the crescendo where the vocals begin, the sound cuts out to reflect how the hearing impaired character is experiencing it, and the theater is quiet. You could hear a pin drop. And into this void you could hear some idiot caught up in the moment belt out the first few lines of the song, from the last row in the balcony.

My face was probably red, but it was too dark to see.

"Don't worry," the woman next to said."We all wanted to do it."

The next day, Inarritu failed to show up for our scheduled interview. But later I confessed this embarrassing anecdote to him in a telephone conversation.